Amnesty seeks assurances on Assange

London: Human rights body Amnesty International has asked the Swedish authorities to issue assurances that Wikileaks founder Julian Assange will not be handed over to the US.

Amnesty said fears Assange will face a US trial over Wikileaks ‘have played no small part in the current stand-off’.

According to the BBC, it added that it has no evidence that Sweden plans to extradite Assange to the US, but if such a ‘forced transfer’ did take place, it believed he would be exposed to a ‘real risk of serious human rights violations’.

“If the Swedish authorities are able to confirm publicly that Assange will not eventually find himself on a plane to the USA if he submits himself to the authority of the Swedish courts then this will hopefully achieve two things,” Nicola Duckworth, Amnesty`s senior director for research, said in a statement.

“First, it will break the current impasse and second it will mean the women who have levelled accusations of sexual assault are not denied justice,” Duckworth added.
Assange has been holed up in Ecuador’s embassy in London since June 19 in a bid to avoid extradition to Sweden.

He fears being sent to the U.S. to face interrogation over the whistle-blowing website.